dork crush

Holy crap... I saw "Pipedream" at the St. Paul science museum, checked out this guy's stuff, and I just have to say that I got a big old mental boner looking at his work. Check out some of his projects at www.taomc.com.

I am so gushing... I think I want to be this guy when I grow up. I looked at his mini-CV and wondered "why did he give up a career in internal medicine?" Well, it's pretty obvious... if you can make a living out of doing cool stuff like this... well, I can definitely understand giving up a lot of stuff.

randoms

In my non-posting-for-a-while, little things been building up... like the recent book club selection The Brief History of the Dead, which, though initially promising, was ultimately disappointing. Too many concepts not fleshed out. Too many suspensions of disbelief required. Too many ideas included when they were only fleeting distractions and would've better been left out. I did like the cover art though, which reminded me of an "empty coat" sculpture at the Walker Art Center sculpture garden... which is, by the way, a pretty damn nice place. I wish there were more sculpture gardens in the world. Especially in the world near where I live, dammit.

My folks live near the Skokie Northshore Sculpture Park and it's pretty nifty to have something like that right in the neighborhood. Especially since it essentially is re-purposing land-fill-ish land that borders one of the sanitary canals (er... I mean "water reclamation district"). When I was a kid, it was just this crappy stretch next to the canal. Now it's a perfect place for a post-dinner walk. Except of course, that I don't live there any more. That's a bummer.

And lastly, while rummaging about in some old photos, I came across this little gem... (if you're squeamish, probably best not to look at the full-sized photo). Kind of wacky, that a bird would get caught like that. I mean... it's not like the bridge is moving fast or anything. Not like the bridge can deviate from its course... Slow and ponderous river-spanning monstrosity, but somehow this avian dumbass managed to get killed by... a bridge. It probably better for the survival of the species that this one won't get to breed any more. A pigeon-ey kind of Darwin Award.

who in their right mind DOESN'T like goatcake?

In honor of spring thaw, Stacey had a little shindig yesterday that I was really sorry to miss the beginning of. Why? Not the scavenger hunt, since my style of scavenger hunt is the city-wide version. Not the dancing - I'm not so much with the dancing - I'm more of a twitcher.

But mostly, I'm so sad to have missed the Goatcake while it was still intact. Who doesn't like sculpted cakes with blood-sacrifice neo-pagan symbology? I mean sheesh, yah gotta be a baby-eatin'-commie or somethin' to not like that.

I don't bake much, but next potluck I go to, I'm bringin' artfood, dammit. Rye-crisp Taj Mahal with Hommus reflecting pool? Maybe a Feta cheese Venus De Milo? Or perhaps something a little more modern?

And if the pot of coffee I just finished has its way with my nervous system, my mind is going to start dreaming up animatronic light-and-sound-show edible beverage fountains.

Art and Sex (de la Heinlein)

Also known as "today's installment of Notable Quotables" - in this case from Stranger In A Strange Land... which was kind of a good thing to read. I'm a little aggravated with all the dystopic science fiction out there with post-apocalyptic whachamajiggers. SIASL isn't exactly utopia, but there's a utopian imagining to it.

On Art:

"Because the world has gone nutty and art always paints the spirit of the time. Rodin died about the time the world started flipping its lid. His successors... failed to see was that the master [Rodin] told stories that laid bare the human heart. They became contemptuous of painting of sculpture that told stories - they dubbed such work 'literary'. The went for all out abstractions."

Jubal shrugged. "Abstract design is all right - for wallpaper or linoleum. But art is the process of evoking pity or terror. What modern artists do is pseudo-intellectual masturbation. Creative art is intercourse, in which the artist renders emotional his audience. These laddies who won't deign to do that - or can't - lost the public. The ordinary bloke will not buy 'art' that leaves him unmoved. If he does pay, the money is conned out of him, by taxes or such."

"Jubal, I've always wondered why I didn't give a hoot for art. I thought it was something missing in me."

"Mmm, one does have to learn to look at art. But it's up to the artist to use language that can be understood. Most of these jokers don't want to use language you and I can learn; they would rather sneer because we 'fail' to see what they are driving at. If anything, Obscurity is the refuge of incompetence."

On Sex:

"...the ethics of sex is a thorny problem. Each of us is forced to grope for a solution he can live with - in the face of a preposterous, unworkable, and evil code of so-called 'Morals.' Most of us know the code is wrong, almost everybody breaks it. But we pay Danegeld by feeling guilty and giving lip service. Willy-nilly, the code rides us, dead and stinking, an albatross around the neck."

"You too, Ben. You fancy yourself a free soul - and break that evil code. But faced with a problem in sexual ethics new to you, you tested it against that same Judeo-Christian code... so automatically your stomach did flip-flops... and you think that proves you're right and they're wrong... Sex should be a means of happiness. Ben, the worst thing about sex is that we use it to hurt each other. It ought never to hurt; it should bring happiness, or at least, pleasure."

"The code says, 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor's wife.' The result? Reluctant chastity, adultery, jealousy, bitterness, blows and sometimes murder, broken homes and twisted children - and furtive little passes degrading to woman and man. Is this Commandment ever obeyed? If a man swore on his own Bible that he refrained from coveting his neighbor's wife because the code forbade it, I would suspect either self-deception or subnormal sexuality. Any male virile enough to sire a child has coveted many women, whether he acts or not."

Found... and constructed

"The Napkins" - now they live In The World. Just think of it as a little bit of urban anthropology... a one-time single episode of Found Magazine. Notes scrawled on napkins found in a bar, long after the band has packed up and the stale beer has been sloshed into the alley. Are they all the same conversation? Are they all the same people? We can see 5 different people by the handwriting. But who is it? And what are they talking about? It seems to have been important enough at the time, or are they just treasured because the voyeur in each of us wants to see, to snoop in the medicine cabinet, rifle through the dresser drawer without getting caught.

Why? Who? What?

Read what you want into it. Make your own story. Exercise your fanatasy muscles. Make them fit your need for art and ephemera.

some of the things I like about the town I live in

I don't know who put this up, but I know I like living in the same city where people do things like this.

Subtle, yet permanent. Nothing you would notice unless your eyes were open, head up, and you are able to walk without having to compulsively talk on the phone.

And for Ann Arborites who might bemoan the loss of ash trees (the City is euthanizing trees in order to try to control the spead of the Emerald Ash Borer)...

In case you didn't know, there seems to be something of a project to create public sculpture from the trunks of dead trees. It's sad to see in The Arb that part of protecting trees involves cutting some down to save others, but at least it's not a total loss.

On the other hand, I'm a little concerned about the sculpture carving in progress near my neighborhood... it kind of looks like something with wings, and I surely hope that it's an eagle or bird of some sort.


PLEASE let it not be some sort of cheesy angel crap. There's enough pseudo-sentiment for supernatural bullshit, I don't need a totem of it shoved in my face any more than it already is. Makes me wonder whether it's city-sponsored activity and whether I can make a state-church seperation argument... And if not, can make an "aesthetically offensive to me with its cheesiness" argument?

Shadow Art Fair

Went to Shadow Art Fair today at Corner Brewery in Ypsi... saw some nifty stuff, and bought a little too. It was pretty chock full of people at the fair, but I heard that Friday was ridiculous busy - as in how-many-people-can-fit-in-this-building full.

Stuff I liked...

Miranda Tarrow's "Circus Peanuts" (which now hangs on my wall)

...and there's just something about "A Half-Sucked Egg" (Miranda Tarrow & Howard Forbes) that I really like. Didn't buy the work, but got the postcard...


Chris Sandon, a part of Dirty Bros. had some alluring/disturbing work available, and lastly, I think I'm going to get all my greeting cards from SappyCards from now on.

damn cool libraries

Places I wish I could teleport to just to see them. (the cost of the plane tickets is too much, just for the scenery)

other people's good stuff...

Nifty art by Thomas Keeley.

Frank Gehry can kiss my ass

"Sketches of Frank Gehry" was playing at the Michigan Theater today, so I thought I would go see it. What a piece of crap. And not just the movie.

Don't get me wrong, I like architecture, and I like sculpture, and Gehry does a decent job of bridging the two, producing Architectural-Works-of-Art. And some of his buildings are truly beautiful. But so often they are just wrong. Bad and wrong. But few will say so, with the notable exception of Hal Foster, who makes a damn good point in his criticism, that there is a cult of adoration and few are willing to speak a disparaging word.

One of the most famous of his buildings, the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain is a beautiful and majestic thing. But it fails as an art museum. An art museum should not want to BE the art. It's not the purpose of the museum. Buildings must be functional on some level, and even if it's a beautiful work of art, it should enable the purpose of the building, not distract from that purpose. Otherwise, they should have just built the building and put nothing in it and let the building be the art.

One of the artists interviewed made a point of "if it distracts from the art, then maybe the art isn't good enough, eh?" Well, interviewed in his bathrobe with a snifter of cognac, wearing sunglasses, slouched in an antique chair, and filmed from below, all I can say is: when he doesn't have to pose for the camera, I'll consider his opinion to have documentary credibility. Until then, he's just a poseur.

The whole movie was essentially a Gehry love-in. A gushing sycophantic masturbatory affair. Go ahead and skip it, you'll be better off.

on the road again...

Amtrak-ing my way up to St. Paul/Minneapolis to visit with Fred and Mona.

... while waiting in the boarding area in Chicago, it's a full waiting room, so I'm sitting on the floor reading, when a guy standing about one step away drops a piece of paper. For about half a second, I think to reach for it and hand it up to him, but then think twice and don't want to interfere in his personal space (or touch his things - he might be sensitive about it), and then think thrice and identify it as "one of those moments, lost".

What do I mean? It's one of those moments that can go one way or another - barely noticeable, but when considered all together they're the fabric, the Feel of a city, a place, a society. Every single person's daily split-second decisions affect the tone of how we all live with each other - vandalize a bus, or help the old lady up the stairs - there's always a choice. We can either become more isolated from another, driving around in our air-conditioned cars, shut up in our cubicles, going home to the cookie-cutter townhouses in the sprawled-out suburbs... or become more neighborly, maybe try walking around, meeting our neighbors, even... just simply handing a guy a piece of paper that he dropped.

... and DAMN if there ain't a whole lot of religious people that ride the train. As I walk out to the lounge car, there's everything from the menonnites (hutterites?) in their garb, to the "Baptized in the Levee" (whatever the magazine is that the woman across the way has), to the standard quietly-bible-browsing-types.


... and why do I keep finding these little notes I made for myself while in Nashua/Boston/D.C.? It's like when you shake all the sand out of your shoes, and then find a little more sand, and never quite get it all out. Anyway, more residual notes to myself, D.C. and otherwise:
- Nighttime rides around Ann Arbor (in after-hours-high-speed-urban-exploration mode) and I find myself at the top of a parking garage near sunset. It seems there's plenty of other people who are fond of rooftops - Roof People, as it were. Not groups, but a handful of individuals or couples that made their way to the top of the parking garage too, maybe just to see that particular sunset, or maybe they were on a date, or whatever, but they definitely weren't there to pick up their cars. I mean, what else would 8 separate people be doing on the top of a parking garage without a single car in sight?
- In the National Gallery: again I'm reminded of my bigotry towards 2-dimension art. Paintings suck. Sculpture rocks. That's all, I just wanted to make sure I made myself clear on that at some point in my life.
- And on the balcony, I look over and wonder again - am I a little bit afraid of heights? I have never thought of myself as afraid of heights, but I get that little hitch in the bottom of my throat (or at the top of my chest) whenever I stand over a long drop (balcony, for example). Now, that might be only in cases where there's a really low railing or none at all... would I feel the same height-anxiety if there were a chest-high railing?

... Everything is exotic and mundane, all at the same time. As I sit on this train, a new (new-ish) experience to be absorbed and savored for its newness, both the environment within the train and the route/terrain we pass through, the conductor walks by and stops to talk with another passenger. To me, this is new. To him, it's something he does every day, and probably holds no great surprise.